Dunwoody city officials have decided to pay interest on property taxes wrongly collected from homeowners over the past three years.
City Council voted July 13 to add 1 percent per month in interest to the amounts now being refunded to taxpayers. The residents were taxed at too high a rate after city officials failed to properly notify DeKalb County of a tax exemption during the years 2012, 2013 and 2014.
About $150,000 in refunds will be sent to owners of about 2,748 residential parcels, based on an initial analysis of the Dunwoody residential tax records for the three-year period, the city said July 8.
Refunds will be as low as 11 cents and as high as $1,000.
Finance Director Chris Pike said July 13 the mistake occurred because the city did not have a staff person designated to report the information to DeKalb. He said he will make this his priority now and work to be more proactive as opposed to reactive.
“I don’t think there was a designated go-to person to make sure that legislation was tracked as closely,” Pike said. “We took more of a reactive point; when something came to our attention that affected us, we reacted.”